Diy

About 12 years ago, I adopted a Geobituary (GCJQGP), a puzzle cache published in 2004. The puzzle was, unfortunately, ambiguous, and there was no checker. The container (a mini-tombstone) and its location adjacent to a city cemetery were fantastic. When I adopted it, the container was in bad shape from the weather. I sought out to build a new one from scratch. The original container in 2009. Not having done this before, I thought it would make sense to frame the tombstone “top” out of wood cut into roughly semicircles. I Filled in the gap with some random wood bits, then screwed it laterally, then through the steel moderate-sized ammo box lid. ...

During one of my CW classes, a couple of my students were waxing on about the fun they had in assembling a QRP Labs QCX+ radio kit. They invited me to participate in the fun. Although I’ve done small kits in the past, this was much more ambitious. I was leery what paltry soldering skills I had were long since vanished. But, eventually, FOMO prevailed and I purchased a kit online. ...

Where to start… (extensively updated 2023-10-26) I initially asked a couple of geocaching friends what they did, and it was evident their visits were stopovers onto somewhere else. It is possible do visit many sites from day-trips while staying in Reykjavik. However, this was my travel destination. While doing a couple of day trips from Reykjavik is fine, the traveling back and forth eats up a lot of valuable vacationing. ...

To honor the fifth month since putting down a deposit on a new furnace and A/C add-on, our existing furnace started acting up this weekend by sleeping in. (This is how it should behave.) I, of course, did not notice the house was 61F, but my spouse certainly did. Thanksgiving 2016 with a dead furnace controller. Fun times! Having more than casual familiarity with the innards from my Thanksgiving 2016 experience, where the control board itself died, I thought I’d do some diagnostics before calling a professional. ...

To celebrate the oven’s 10th birthday, the “hot surface” light would come on more often (such as running the oven, but not burner) and stay on up to three hours (!) after the surface has reached room temperature. Each heating element has a thermostat, and this is a symptom of one or more of those going out. Unfortunately, the thermostat is built into the heating element, so the whole thing must be replaced. Fortunately, the four sizes of elements are fairly common and available at fine places like Repair Clinic. ...

I have had some interest in experimenting with satellite radio. Typically you transmit on one band, receive on another. This can be done with two radios, but I wanted to keep things simpler and use one. I happened to find someone selling a Kenwood TM-V71a mobile radio for an attractive price. It’s a nice radio, but when I used it indoors, the fan was too loud for me to hear the speaker. The Ubiquitous Cooling Fan ...

If you give a mouse a cookie, they’ll get crumbs and chocolate all over their clothes. When they get crumbs and chocolate all over their clothes, the laundry piles up. When the laundry piles up, you will need to use the Electrolux front-loading washing machine. When you do several years-worth of laundry in the Electrolux front-loading washing machine, you’ll eventually discover it was leaking all over the floor. And you’ll call a repair person. And then another. And another. And another. And another. And another. Four will tell you Electrolux front-loading washing machines are “bad news” and decline to fix them. The fifth will tell you he’s on injury leave (we wish him a speedy recovery), and the sixth will say he will fix it, but the earliest appointment is in two weeks. ...

The other night, one of my kids managed to spill soup into the vents on the top of the oven door, which then dripped between the two oven door glass panels. Googling around, I discovered this is not uncommon, but there were scant instructions for cleaning between the glass of an oven door. Rather, forum contributors were evenly divided among “buck up and live with it,” “sell the house,” “call a professional to repair it,” and “replace the oven” — roughly my priority of options. Since this was a relatively new kitchen remodel, my better half was antsy to have it fixed. As I’m always up for a challenge, I thought it would be helpful to document the process in case anyone else has a need for cleaning between the glass of their oven’s door ...